Parents Not Liable For Their Son's Illegal Music Sharing, Says German Court 207
An anonymous reader sends this quote from an IDG News report:
"A German couple are not liable for the filesharing activities of their 13-year old son because they told him unauthorized downloading and sharing of copyrighted material was illegal, and they were not aware the boy violated this prohibition, the German Federal Court of Justice ruled on Thursday. ... The ruling of the Federal Court of Justice reversed a ruling of the higher regional court of Cologne, which found the parents were liable for the illegal filesharing because they failed to fulfill their parental supervision. That court said the parents could have installed a firewall on their son's computer as well as a security program that would have made it possible to only allow the child to install software with the consent of his parents. Besides that, the parents could have checked their son's PC once a month, and then the parents would have spotted the Bearshare icon on the computers' desktop, according to the Cologne court. 'The Federal Court overturned the decision of the Appeal Court and dismissed it,' the court said."
Now for the parents the problem is (Score:5, Funny)
how to justify the 13 year old's apparent love of music from the 60s and 70s...
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Well, they educated them to have a good taste.
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The 60's and 70's put out a bunch of really shitty music too, so let's not jump to conclusions about their musical taste.
still safe to have kids? (Score:4, Funny)
Bad enough that your teenager might wreck your classic sports car, get busted for trying to buy alcohol or cigarettes, become a sex offender for sexting, cause a pregnancy, or thousands of other delinquent acts. At least if they commit piracy, you're personally off the hook now. Too bad your family isn't. You could disown the kid, I suppose.
Re:still safe to have kids? (Score:5, Funny)
Bad enough that your teenager might wreck your classic sports car
However, if his friend does it you get a truly great movie.
Regarding the court decision, it sounds at the headline level to be very sensible. Parental responsibility has to have boundaries, and the parents seem to have taken reasonable steps.
This should never have reached court in the first place. Revise copyright laws, etc.
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Not having actually read TFA, I'm not so sure. Telling someone to do something is good, but is useless if there are no checks to verify that what you say has been followed. So I still think it's negligent - they apparently neglected to follow up on their initial bit of good parenting.
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Kids have to have the space to do bad things from time to time.
I don't want mindless drones, I want inquisitive experimental people that aren't afraid to try things and have no fear of getting it wrong.
Enabling transgression of the established order is almost essential to building that mindset.
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You could disown the kid, I suppose
If the kid gets fined one kajillion dollars for each song he downloaded, as the RIAA recommends, you'd better...
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No, we don't. There's no reason to criminalize an activity that is practiced by 90%+ of the population. Rules that run against human nature will only stay on paper and open the door for abuse. They won't change peoples' ways. The only thing we need to crack down on is commercial piracy and rogue publishers that take works, modify then and release them in such a way that it harms authors' reputation.
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Your stuff may only be worth $0 on the open market.
If no one is buying your stuff, then you are just a loser. There's no other way to put it. Rampant piracy does not prevent people from making money. Being lame is what prevents people from making money. There's only so much money out there and you have to be able to compete for it.
No one is going to lay the world at your feet just because you think you're entitled.
Don't let artistic megalomania distract you from taking care of business.
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You misunderstand the issues. This isn't about running artists out of business, this is about the way business works. We're not asking you to work for free. But, neither will we give up the huge public good known as "sharing" and commonly demonized as "piracy" because you won't accept any other way of doing your business, or even acknowledge that other ways could work.
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Should we work at McDonalds and produce our work for free so that you can get free sh*t?
Of course not! You aren't obligated to produce creative works. If you don't find the market conditions suitable, go get a regular job and abandon your art. But if you're willing to be a sucker, as it were, and work for free, why should that be anyone's fault but your own?
They create it, for among other reasons, to get money
That is certainly true of some copyrightable works, though not the majority of works. But when it isn't necessary to grant a copyright in order to incentivize an author to create and publish a work he otherwise would not have, why should we
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Free speech is your right to say what you want without being persecuted by the government.
It's more than that.
What right does an author have to create his own work (music, poetry, books, music, software) and sell or distribute it at his whim? What right does the public have to copy someone else's work once that work is in the public domain?
It's all the same thing: free speech. It basically has to be, since there's no right granted by the government to do these things. It must be an inherent right, which we would possess even in the absence of government, and it's typically called free speech.
Cop
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The concept of creative property is wrong.
It is contrary to the law.
People need to stop repeating pro-corporate mythology and treating it like the truth. The truth is actually a bit more subtle.
It sounds like this kid shared nothing that shouldn't already be in the public domain if not for the fact that the law continually gets distorted to favor gatekeepers.
If you want greater respect for the law, then start by making the law respectable again.
Nobody cares for piracy (Score:2)
But what if a kid steals, gets into a fight or robs people? Who will be liable?
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Schools and teachers. Usually parents defer their parenting responsibilities to them nowadays...
Re:Nobody cares for piracy (Score:4, Informative)
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I know that it happens with a lot of kids because I happened to live in a ghetto area for a few years. When the police got tough on them, parents started training their kids to steal, mug and break in because they couldn't be held liable. If you allow a crime to go unpunished that will be abused.
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But that happens only in countries that has ghettos or slums.
Germany has neither.
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If you allow a crime to go unpunished that will be abused.
OK, so lets arrest everybody who's ever made a mix tape/CD or ripped a CD to their iPod (may be OK in the US under 'fair use' law, but it is definitely copyright violation here in the UK*, possibly also in Germany where this story comes from). At a ball park estimate that's about 100% of the population (maybe 99%, but the 1% will probably have sung 'Happy Birthday' in a public place so it doesn't make much difference).
On second thoughts, no, let's not risk the total discredit and collapse of the justice
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Whereas if the court decided that the parents somehow influenced the kid to do the stuff whether directly or indirectly the judgement could be very different.
If you're not one of the very powerful don't expect to get away on a weasel technicality if the judge doesn't think you deserve to. "I didn't tell my son to do it, I wrote a ROT13 message and he happened to stumble upon it, decrypt it and do the ev
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I do agree that impunity is negative to society, and that the age at which one is held accountable for a crime should depend on the crime and not be homogeneous for all crimes. For example, anyone, no matter the age should be accountable for murder. Fighting with non lethal consequences or grave injuries, on the othe
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If the kid is caught with the only one copy of an MP3 that doesn't exist elsewhere in the world, I guess he will have stolen it and will eventually be forced to give it back.
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But what if a kid steals, gets into a fight or robs people? Who will be liable?
What's that got to do with this? Those are serious crimes that result in real people being injured or deprived of their hard-earned property. The only "damage" in the case of copyright violation is the slim, hypothetical possibility that, if the kid hadn't been able to get the material, he'd have paid for them and the artists would have got a thousandth of a cent in royalties.
Wake me up if the kid was running a large-scale illegal download site shipping ripped-off content to sufficient thousands of people
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Depends on the situation.
If you can make clear the kid 'knew what it did was bad/evil/a crime' _but_ at the moment where it happened you had no controll over it, then you insurance will pay (not the same as being liable).
If the kid causes monetary damage and you are not insurrd, you are liable.
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Child insurance? You Germans think of everything.
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No, not 'child insurance' but 'third party liability insurance'.
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If you can make clear the kid 'knew what it did was bad/evil/a crime' _but_ at the moment where it happened you had no controll over it, then you insurance will pay (not the same as being liable). If the kid causes monetary damage and you are not insurrd, you are liable.
Careful. In Germany, where this happened, a child under 7 years is not responsible for anything. If damage happened because you as the parent were negligent, you are liable. If the damage happened without you being negligent, nobody is liable. Like holding your child by the hand, it tears itself lose, runs into the street, causes a pileup. You were not negligent, nobodies fault. If you had no control because these things just happen, not your fault. If you had no control because you were negligent, your fau
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Thats what I said.
However your examples are a bit missleading. E.G. you hold the child at your hand and it hits a car with a stick: you are liable!
Re:Nobody cares for piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
But what if a kid steals, gets into a fight or robs people? Who will be liable?
Why the presumption that someone has to be liable?
If a bear cub comes crashing through the woods and breaks into a tent, it's bad. But we don't put the bear or its parents on trial, nor sentence them to pay back the owner.
I buy insurance to cover the cases where bad things happen and no one is liable. It doesn't cover everything, but if it happens, it helps.
That said, parents are of course responsible for investing the time and resources in rearing their children as well as they can. If they don't, they're guilty of neglecting their children's upbringing -- a rather serious crime in itself, but unless they teach their children to break the law, they're not guilty of the crimes their children commit.
How to control? (Score:3)
The 13 yr old probably knows more about how to circumvent the measures suggested by the earlier court than the parents know about installing them. It was a stupid ruling and should have been struck down. The only reason for it is that those that are prosecuting know that the parents have money and the boy does not.
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A 12 yo installed a key logger (Score:2)
Good point (Score:2)
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And then, forget P2P applications like Bearshare, which I only found out today still exists, and I did some of the early beta testing on it. Forget it because because MP3s can be downloaded from all manner of places. FTP, IM, HTTP, teh browser.
Bah to it all.
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Firewall? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't have access to the first courts ruling.
But during the higher courts session it became clear: THEY HAD A FIREWALL and had tried to restrict his users rights to install new software.
Ofc. it is beyond any laymans responsibility to install aditional software to 'guard his children' from illegal activities.
Even more annoying: the law situation is crystal clear. Nevertheless the 'music company' sued in the hope to get a cheap victory in a lower court from an unexperienced judge.
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Downloading is illegal? (Score:2)
Maybe in Germany? In the US as far as I can tell, downloading is nor more illegal than bringing bootleg CDs home that you bought on the street of some third-world country, or bringing home a counterfeit good you bought in China on the street. It's the sharing and uploading that is the apparent illegal part. Not to mention profiting. Is this not true?
Re:Come on! (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's pretty disturbing that you got modded up to "Insightful." Disobeying one's parents from time to time is inevitable, but "getting around all limitations" is not a filial "duty." What rubbish.
What are you a nipple-neck?
A child's job is to hack reality. A child's three primary goals are to 1) experience, 2) learn, and 3) test boundaries of their current experience/knowledge. Fun and entertainment is an evolutionary benefit to physically/physiologically promote those goals. Like hunger being painful and sex being pleasurable.
Adulthood is a word for the stage of life when strictly obeying your progenitors is merely one option.
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If a child has to re-learn reality from scratch, that's not a very useful process. Most parents do pass on useful information to children. It may be a good idea for a child to see what is absolutely necessary as opposed to just their parents' very strongly worded preference, but many children who try and get around their parents (unless their parents are useless wastes of space) end up just having to learn the same lessons the hard way later anyway.
Re:Come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
He was just downloading stuff, it's not like he was smoking cigarettes or drinking.
Jesus.
Piracy for personal use = total worth ignoring
Re:Come on! (Score:4, Insightful)
He was just downloading stuff, it's not like he was smoking cigarettes or drinking.
Jesus.
Piracy for personal use = total worth ignoring
I totally agree. However, he was not just downloading, he was "sharing", uploading as well. So he stole a pack of gum, and gave a few away. That's the size of this case. Give him a good spanking, and let it go.
These laws are stupid. How in hell are parents able to tell what a kid is doing on his/her computer? How many parents are able to tell the difference between two icons that don't look like Word or IE? After this ruling, all kids know to delete these icons from their desktop. Or they learn how to change the icon into something else. There is probably an app for that.
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Yes, Right Click on the Icon | Properties | Change Icon ... | Browse ... | Look for MS Word or something and use its icon.
Re:Come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents should take alternate shifts so there's always one awake watching their child at any moment of the day or the night. Having more than one child should be forbidden because then watching them 24 hours a day would be impossible with only 2 parents.
Re:Come on! (Score:5, Funny)
And since we are talking about teenagers those propably should be armed with more than just harsh language.
So for proper parenting you will need to hire 6 Blackwater mercs just to make sure.
Also: what does a Bearshare logo look like? Hadn't heard of that before. I would have understood Beavershare. He is an adolescent after all...
Re:Come on! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, come on. That's not their only option. I count a few other options:
1 - No access to any computational device, ever.
2 - The parents could have become IT specialists.
3 - The parents could have paid a firm to monitor their child 24/7.
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also a firewall does not block apps that you install and want to use.
and security program The parents can think that microsoft security essentials is one that does not block file shearing apps.
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Oh, come on. That's not their only option. I count a few other options:
1 - No access to any computational device, ever.
2 - The parents could have become IT specialists.
3 - The parents could have paid a firm to monitor their child 24/7.
4 - don't have children
5 - profit!
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And THIS is why we need the government to install security cameras in everyone's home. To save the people from having to monitor themselves or their children. Isn't that the government mandate?
Bonus points if they can just install a V-CHIP into all children's brains to not only monitor their behavior, but to actually alter it so that they can conform to being good passive citizens!
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Obligatory Parking Lot is Full [courageunfettered.com]
Re:Come on! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Come on! (Score:5, Funny)
You know, I was able to bypass this problem by making my son's cage floor a wire mesh. Now the droppings fall right through. As an added bonus, when I need to hose the floor down I can also spray the boy for his shower. Two birds with one stone.
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Mitt? Is that you?
Re:Come on! (Score:5, Informative)
sorry but that is exactly what the highest court in Germany just decided is NOT the case. You completely got it back to front.
It may be YOUR opinion that the situation is different, but the high court decision in Germany is that the LAW doesn't require this. End of story.
Re:Come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
You watch over your 13 year old every minute of every day? 13 is more than old enough to have a private life and private activities, in fact I would argue that trying to deny them that would have a much worse effect on society than downloading music does. How long does it take to install some peer to peer software and hide it? 20 minutes? Maybe 5 minutes to queue up each song and move it to the device of your choice. Yeah, letting your teenager have 30 minutes on a PC without your supervision should be a criminal offense. Not digging through every file on the family PC should be a criminal offense. Not spying on your children should be a criminal offense. That all makes perfect sense.
Re:Come on! (Score:4, Insightful)
Thirteen is old enough to think through things rationally and question social mores. Filesharing is largely a victimless crime and the thread of reasoning for it carrying a punishment is tenuous at best. It's easy to see how a person with a well developed sense of right and wrong can think filesharing isn't wrong.
Anyway, he was downloading old music, right? Some of it was from artists that are now dead. The bigger stretch is saying that it's wrong to deprive media executives income derived from the works of other dead people. It takes a much more twisted sense of right and wrong to justify eternal (forever minus a day) style of copyright with massive financial or criminal penalties.
Re:Come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Any parent who is truly aware of everything their child is doing should be reported to child services.
By giving kids no autonomy to learn the world for themselves you're not only potentially stunting their mental growth but potentially also breeding one hell of a rebellion when a child gets to that age.
Re:Come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please. If this was 25 years ago and involved a kid sharing music via cassette tapes, no one would have batted an eyelash. The only stupid thing is that it gets take to court now because 1 kid among literally millions gets caught and has to be made the scapegoat for the rest of society. Total and utter bullshit.
GEMA should go fuck itself.
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So if your son shoots someone, you should go to jail.
Good to know.
Re:In that specific jurisdiction -German readers h (Score:4)
Probably not but the kid is. Big difference between a felony and a civil issue anyways. Even then the kid should be treated a lot differently than an adult in respect to the felony.
I'm a parent I believe in parental responsibilities at the same time I'm not the sue everybody sort. My son stole something once he was 2 and a half at the time, I noticed a couple minutes later brought him back into the store had him give it back and apologize. I do not think you need to get into litigation, police etc, this is part of growing up and being a parent. I think the thing people tend to forget is the parents need to be the ultimate authority as far as the child is concerned to do otherwise undermines there ability to parent. By the RIAA/MPAA definition reading a magazine in the store constitutes theft and you should pay 1000 times the real value to account for the people they did not catch and and the store should enforce this for them, check out lines would never be the same.
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You do know the difference between civil and criminal law right?
Murder is a criminal offense and would be tried in a criminal court where the rules of punishment range from fines, probation, jail time and even death in some locations. Criminal cases are brought by the state and prosecuted by the state for violating criminal laws.
Downloading music in violation of copyright is a civil matter. The state really doesn't care that much if you do it and are not likely going to be interested in tracking you down
the criminal standard of proof are to high for mos (Score:2)
the criminal standard of proof are to high for most of the file sharing cases.
Ever more so if they just have a IP and did not even download the file from his system.
IP address have a lot of ISP errors that can flag some one who did not even share a file at or even flag a printer as a file shearing system.
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The question being asked here is what is the civil responsibility of parents when their children are taken to civil court and loose. It seems that in Germany, the collection of civil judgments against minors just got a lot more difficult. Given that most 13 year old kids don't usually own that much or even have a job, I suspect this will pretty much squash any attempts to sue kids for sharing music in Germany at least.
No, collecting money for causing criminal damage for example is no problem. They will wait until you make enough money. The problem with a 13 year old will be that you have problems holding him responsible in the first place, which is why they tried to go after the parents. And another problem will be to get a huge monetary amount for copying music in Germany, against anyone. I would be quite sure that if a fourteen year old smashes up your car intentionally, he'll pay for it. Eventually.
So the problem i
Re:In that specific jurisdiction -German readers h (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, downloading illegal music is a criminal offense. Illegally downloading (legal) music is a civil offense. Illegal music in Germany would e.g. be Nazi songs etc...
Help ME: In which country do you jail the parents (Score:2)
If the 13-year-old commits murder, are the parents liable? Are the parents liable for any of the kid's law-breaking actions?
How's downloading illegal music any different?
...when their child commits murder? There are plenty of cases in the US and the UK available to research. Unless you hand your kid the gun, or don't leave YOUR gun lying around (applies to the US mostly), only the child ends up in (a special, depending on age) court. Then of course, in the US there are plenty examples where a 12 year old is tried as an adult, but that still leaves out the parents.
As for your second question, of course! If they are directly responsible. You cannot send your child to commit a
Re:In that specific jurisdiction -German readers h (Score:4, Insightful)
"Age of criminal responsibility"
Differentiating between crimes isn't done in this fine scale (i.e. at 10 you can murder, but at 15 you can't, etc.) - you're either criminally responsible for your actions or not. The offence only determines the severity of the crime, not your capacity to know better.
Most countries have this at an age where the child should "know better", i.e. usually around 10 years old. Below that age, you can't be "criminally responsible" for the acts you've committed, because it's unlikely you understood what you were doing or what the impact would be (i.e. a toddler pushing another toddler off a high-rise block of flats while playing).
What you're confusing is the SEVERITY of the crime, and the capacity to know whether what you're doing is wrong or not. The severity of the crime determines the possible "punishment", the capacity to know what you were doing determines whose fault that was (i.e. parent for leaving you alone, you for not knowing better, etc.)
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OP is trying to understand the German liability laws for parents, not make a moral comparison between the two
A parent is liable if they neglect to supervise their children properly. Courts will take a common sense approach to this. A 13 year old is capable of making their own decisions, and capable of doing things on their own. You are not neglecting to supervise them if you tell a 13 year old what to do and he secretly does it.
Many people in Germany have liability insurance. So if your five year old scratches your neighbour's car, the liability insurance will ask if you neglected to supervise your child proper
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Would the parents incur any liability under German law if they left an unsecured gun around the house and the kid used it to kill someone?
IANAGNAL, but the rational thing would be to have leaving an unsecured gun be the same crime whether someone got to it and used it or not. The severity of a crime should not be affected by happenstance.
Which is why I'm also not happy with how we distinguish between murder and attempted murder. The criminal act is the same - if two people shoot at two victims with the intent to kill, it makes no sense to me that if one of them survives, the sentencing should be different. The crime stopped when the trigger was pulled, and what happened afterwards is not part of the crime. The effect can not change the cause, unless you apply religion instead of reason.
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Bears that share [goo.gl] are probably the MOST dangerous thing on the internet!
Re:That's not my computer... (Score:5, Informative)
So does this mean a 13 year old will bet sent to jail?
No, this is the civilized world, where they don't usually send children to prison.
Or anyone to prison for what's clearly not crimes where the society needs to be protected from the individual.
Prisoners, USA: 0.73% of the population
Prisoners, Germany: 0.083% of the population (and that's high by world standards).
Children serving life without parole, USA: ~2500
Children serving life without parole, rest of the world combined: 0
Re:That's not my computer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Children serving life without parole, rest of the world combined: 0
Not quite true. There are also child prisoners in North Korea who are unlikely to be released.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_22 [wikipedia.org]:
Based on the guilt by association principle (Korean: [some Korean text that Slashdot won't print here], yeonjwaje) they are often imprisoned together with the whole family including children and the elderly.[12] All prisoners are detained until they die and prisoners are never released.[18]
So no, not just the USA.
Of course, if you meant the rest of the civilized world, then you'd probably be correct.
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Of course, if you meant the rest of the civilized world, then you'd probably be correct.
But, Shirley, then I would have excluded USA too...
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(sorry, somebody had to say it)
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Can you break down the ages of the ~2500? When I see 'Children', I guess I'm thinking 18 and under, but in Germany (as noted below), children are 11 and under. Are there ~2500 kids under the age of 12 in prison serving life without parole in the US?
[John]
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People who were betwen 13 and 17 when the alleged crimes were committed. I believe there are 40 who were age 13.
Compared to the zero figure for the rest of the world combined, any figure 1 or higher is way too high.
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You are right, in more oppressive societies, the government would just have them killed. Yay, rest of the world!
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You are right, in more oppressive societies, the government would just have them killed. Yay, rest of the world!
Actually, people being executed for crimes committed while children has been more of a problem here in the US than anywhere else I can think of.
And, to bring this back to modern Germany, how many children have they either incinerated for long sentences or killed? The answer should be really unsurprising.
It's the mentality that children should be subject to adult punishment that I find abhorrent. We don't give them the privileges of an adult, so we have no business giving them the responsibilities either.
T
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We don't give them the privileges of an adult, so we have no business giving them the responsibilities either.
But we do sometimes give them the privileges of an adult. So your reasoning doesn't hold.
Interresting factoid : (Score:5, Informative)
USA the land of freedom. Well not if you are a child obviously.
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Perhaps because capital punishment was already prohibited under other international conventions. And not just for children.
Re:That's not my computer... (Score:5, Informative)
Backhanded attempt?
2500 to 0 speaks for itself. It requires no explanation.
Re:That's not my computer... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you'd rather have 2500 psychopathic children free to roam the streets of your town, and potentially grow up to commit more horrible crimes than they have already been convicted of doing?
The rest of the world appears to manage. And with every other country having a much lower adult prison population too, I can't see the American policy having solved a lot of the problem with adult crimes?
At the risk of being modded into oblivion I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest you may be a moslem shill. I say this because of the statistically young age of suicide bombers and the high probability they suffer from a severe pathology.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm a white freethinker with no sympathy for absurd nonsense like religion and dogmatism, on either side.
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You're being trolled. Please don't feed the Trolls.
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In some countries, 16 is a legal adult.
In other countries, 16 is effectively an adult.
So Europeans whining about the American incarceration of "children" is a little disengenuous. Kind of reminds one of how American fundies like to trivialize young adults.
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So Europeans whining about the American incarceration of "children" is a little disengenuous.
How about an American whining about it?
Anyhow, 13 year olds are, I believe, children by any country's definition.
And if you think the US definition of children is too high, you need to work to rectify this then, because children are to be given special rights and protections according to the UN charter of children's rights. You can't pick and choose and give people a certain age the limitations of a child but not the protections. Either give them both, or neither.
Re:That's not my computer... (Score:4, Insightful)
But this is an adult crime:
"(11-16) 10:57 PST VALLEJO -- A 14-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and attempting to murder a 65-year-old woman in Vallejo, police said Friday.
The suspect was booked at Solano County Juvenile Hall on allegations of attempted murder, assault, carjacking, armed robbery and kidnapping for ransom.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Boy-14-arrested-in-assault-of-woman-65-4043616.php#ixzz2CPmK03Sr [sfgate.com]"
This was today, near San Francisco.
This is an adult crime. Talk to the 65 year old woman he raped about "children are to be given special rights and protections according to the UN charter of children's rights".
Ask her what she thinks about that.
Re:That's not my computer... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're clearly applying feelings and not reason to what happened.
Did the child in question enjoy the rights you and I have, to work, vote or otherwise change his situation? No? Then how is he responsible for actions his situation put him in?
This is a child. Yes, the acts were heinous. That doesn't mean that the child is beyond our help. Yes, help is what he needs, desperately.
What good would it do anyone to put him in jail for life? It wouldn't be preventative, cause children don't look at sentence levels before doing things. It wouldn't rehabilitate him. It wouldn't unrape the woman.
Get this child help now, and stop letting your base feelings for revenge dictate what should be done.
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In the U.S. 16 is still a minor. If the U.S. doesn't want to be bashed for trying 16 year olds as adults, it should lower the drinking voting ages accordingly.
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The consequences for piracy should be no graver than those for jaywalking or speeding.
There is considerable disagreement on these matters regarding just how severe "piracy" is and how much social cost should be tolerated in order to prevent copying.